


Cities of Ash and Marble

by Masked_Man_2



Category: Erik Larson (author), Nonfiction books, The Devil in the White City
Genre: AP English, Analysis, Character Analysis, Chicago World's Fair, Essays, Murder, Nonfiction, Serial Killers, Written for a Class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 19:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7119595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masked_Man_2/pseuds/Masked_Man_2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An analysis of Erik Larson's book 'The Devil in the White City,' written for an AP English class.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cities of Ash and Marble

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: This is the first essay I wrote for the AP Language and Composition class I took this year, analyzing various elements of Erik Larson’s fantastic nonfiction novel, The Devil in the White City. which I DO NOT OWN!!!

Two cities, completely disparate in character and image, stand in uneasy juxtaposition, coexisting with only the most tenuous of truces wrought of willing disregard for the other. On one side lies the White City, the epitome of every human ideal ever conceived at the time. With its advanced technology, well-maintained streets, and enviably upheld public hygiene, this city has it all, and is a veritable Utopia in the eyes of the skeptical world that come flocking to see it. On the other side, a sordid metropolis, dark and laden with vice, teems with what might well be deemed the worst of society’s dregs and castaways. Violence, psychosis, hedonism, and all of humanity’s most ignominious impulses congregate here, marking this city as a symbol of depravity at its ‘finest.’ 

It might stand to reason, then, for one to believe that these two cities should never grow intertwined, set as they are in such diametric opposition. But intertwined is precisely what they become, and Erik Larson’s  _ The Devil in the White City _ relates in astonishing detail the particulars of this most unfortunate overlap by following the stories of two men, both living embodiments of one side or another. The first is Daniel Burnham, an architect whose indefatigable drive toward progress in all fields of life pushed him to spearhead the construction of the Chicago World’s Fair, one of the greatest projects undertaken by the American nation at the time. The second, Doctor H. H. Holmes, or the notorious Herman Mudgett, a cozening, simpering, dashing rake of a man whose habitual cheating of debt and love-’em-and-leave-’em womanizing masked a serial killer of truly monstrous proportions, using the splendor and duende of the fair to lure unsuspecting (mostly female) victims to his ‘World’s Fair Hotel:’ what later became known, for perspicuous reasons, as his ‘Castle of Death.’ These two men, between them, create within themselves the images of those aforementioned cities, white and black, as their separate stories of creation and expiry converged in the indelible grandeur and squalor that was 1890s Chicago.

Right from the outset, Larson’s work efficaciously captures the reader’s attention with its novel-like structure and adroit amalgamation of extensive research and vividly engaging prose. In marked contrast to the didactic, pedantic tone of many nonfiction works, Larson’s energetic, dynamic diction, sharply delineated characterizations and images, and utilization of multiple viewpoints and storylines ultimately make the story much more accessible to ordinary readers and, subsequently, translate into a greater modicum of success achieved by Larson’s intent, which is  _ to tell a story _ : more specifically, the foregoing stories of Burnham and Holmes, and their disparate affiliations with the great World’s Fair in all its tragic glory. They became linked as the fair progressed: both intrinsic parts of the event’s history, representing both the brightness of the human spirit of progress that created it, and the darkness of the death, the accidents, and the perverse occurrences that so besmirched its pristine white image. Larson pairs these two equally radical, visionary men opposite one another “to open a window on the forces shaping the American soul at the dawn of the 20th century,” demonstrating indefectibly the remarkability that such a “period of creativity” could encompass both such monumental progress as the building of the fair evinced, and “a serial killer of such appetite and industry” as Holmes.

As has been aforementioned, Larson (if inadvertently) creates in his two main ‘characters’ opposing symbols of the two cities that Chicago was at the time. However, he also draws a great many parallels betwixt the two, describing them both as “handsome...blue-eyed, and...unusually adept at their chosen skills.” These carefully constructed analogies, rather than disconcerting the reader by referencing the uncanny similarities  existing between them, actually serve to enhance this juxtaposition, helping to later transfer it, in the reader’s mind, to the one present between Larson’s two limned cities. In this vein, by describing one as “an architect, the builder of many of America’s most important structures,” and the other as “a murderer, one of the most prolific in history and harbinger of an American archetype: the urban serial killer,” Larson encapsulates within his prose the antipodal sentiments he wishes to evoke in the readers: pride (in regarding tangible proof of the versatility and vehemence of the human drive towards progress), and horrified anathema (in being made to observe such a callous robbery of human life as that which Holmes so gleefully undertook). Furthermore, he makes a bold statement about the true nature of the human spirit, in choosing figures of such renown (or notoriety) as Burnham and Holmes, who embody so completely the former and latter characteristics, respectively. All of us, he might well be saying,  _ have in our minds  _ our own ‘devil’ in the ‘White City’ of our moral subconscious. All of us  _ possess _ that ambition, that esprit, that drove Burnham to achieve such success in creating the Fair, a new and prosperous image for America’s Gilded Age. All of us  _ suppress _ impulses patterned after those of Holmes, that inner demon of the vile and perverse, insidiously urging degeneracy at every turn.  _ No one _ is exempt from these paradoxes of the human condition; no master architect has  _ never  _ entertained ignominious notions; no mass murderer has  _ never _ been struck by the puissant desire to create...and in the years and months antecedent to the Fair that lost and won the nation so much, Larson relates the truth of this condition with a veracity that many might balk at examining, for fear of what they might find within. 

 

Let us first venture into the story of Burnham. With several notable exceptions that are relatively few in number, Burnham’s tale is told more or less chronologically, giving it a sort of forthright precision that the somewhat disarrayed and inconsistent Holmes narrative lacks. Larson supplements his relation of the great architect’s history with a wealth of research into his early years, the development of his architectural career, his personal life and grievances, and the eventual undertaking of constructing the World’s Fair. Detailed descriptions of his shortcomings in school, his various ventures into various distinct trades, and his success as an architect and businessman opposite master draftsman John Root, as well as dynamic characterizations of such ‘supporting characters’ as Root (Burnham’s long-time partner, creative other, and friend), Francis Olmstead (the landscaper who designed Central Park and was commissioned to design the grounds for the Fair), and others further aid in corroborating Larson’s effort to present in logical, manifest succession the circumstances that helped to shape both the charismatic figure that was Daniel Burnham, and the projects for which he will long be revered. 

In contrast, Holmes’s story is revealed in sporadic increments, with accounts of his dealings in the present time being interspersed with flashbacks within the narrative to formative events in his youth and frequent interjections of regret in hindsight by those too beguiled by his charms and slick operating to realize that a sadistic murderer had them all sorely duped. Vivid sensory imagery and rich tropic language give the Holmes narrative a distinctive character and dramatic flair that the more fact-laden and upright Burnham segments do not quite possess; likewise, Larson’s darkly poetic descriptions of the sullied and salacious Black City resound obstreperously through the twisted allure of these chapters, while such detail is used much more sparingly to bring to life the towering grandeur of Burnham’s beloved White City, ultimately lending more weight to the strength of juxtaposition employed. 

 

Indeed, juxtaposition is precisely the area in which Larson excels as he constantly highlights areas of disparate similitude betwixt these two characters (and the cities they embody so thoroughly), and there are many instances within the text in which these analogies are made galvanically clear. Barring the comparisons already aforementioned, the first of these encompasses not only the ubiquitous Burnham/Holmes disparity, but also the almost desperate efforts of the fair-builders to present a pristine, Utopian image to obscure the squalor and tragedy that ran rampant beneath. “That something magical had occurred that summer...was beyond doubt, but darkness too had touched the fair,” seems, in its ambivalent, ominous tone, to foreshadow some gruesome relation of the ‘darkness’ that will inevitably succeed this too-good-to-be-true vision that Larson has painted of the fair thus far, and, indeed, he does not disappoint. He goes on to describe in grave detail the particulars of this darkness, invoking in the readers a sense of indignation and discomfiture: “Scores of workers had been hurt or killed in building the dream, their families consigned to poverty. Fire had killed fifteen more, and an assassin had transformed the closing ceremony from what was to have been the century’s greatest celebration into a vast funeral. Worse had occurred, too, although these revelations emerged only slowly.” This resounding appeal to human pathos is made all too effective by the vivid images painted of the squalor, pain, and fear that were both inherent in the fair’s genesis and endeavored to be kept hidden by its creators. Larson also extends into this description a continuance of a sort of ‘coin’ analogy reminiscent of earlier comparisons of the same type. On the one hand lies the facade that Burnham and his associates wanted the public to see: the beauty, the exotic novelty, the advancement, the perfection. The flip side encompasses all of the tragedy that they so diligently worked to conceal, the inevitable casualties of this seemingly impossible “dream:” the accidents, the poverty-stricken families, and the death. In addition, the segment’s last line also serves to foreshadow some dire end to come, and therein lies, once again, the citation of the quotidian Burnham/Holmes juxtaposition. Larson goes on to say in no uncertain terms that “A murderer had moved among the beautiful things Burnham had created. Young women drawn to Chicago by the fair and by the prospect of living on their own disappeared, last seen at the serial killer’s block-long mansion, a parody of everything architects held dear.” This last description, more than anything else, serves to emphasize this dichotomy; designating Homes’s mansion, his own Castle of Doom, as a ‘parody of everything architects held dear’ calls to mind Larson’s earlier assertions that the two men were “unusually adept at their chosen skills.” Both were, in a sense, architects,  _ artists _ : the former, an agent of beauty and rich vision, despite the tragedy that his dream wrought, and the latter, an agent of destruction and death, a mere facsimile of a visionary of Burnham’s caliber in an opposing sordid sphere. 

The second such analogy is made more between the cities than anything else, but the puissance of contrast still renders it crucial to the purpose. In both associated passages, it is Larson’s use of extraordinarily vivid sensory imagery that lends intensity and weight to the comparisons: that, and the adroit manipulation of exhaustively researched facts into narrative descriptions that make the salient point of  _ contrast _ all the more perspicuous. Larson first endeavors to capture the more approbatory elements of the fair (and, by association, the White City) by effectively caricaturing it into a holy place: “Visitors wore their best clothes and most somber expression, as if entering a great cathedral. Some wept at its beauty.” This air of nearly divine perfection was not one that had ever been previously attributed to the fair thus far in the text, but even so, the allusion has a strong impact on the reader, serving to highlight the beauty and magnitude of the fair by equating it with something so profound as a cathedral-goer’s ecstasy in one of God’s finer houses. Cathedrals are, after all, monuments, shrines to awe-inspiring architecture inspired by divinity; so too was the Fair a living testament to the nearly preternatural holy spirit of American progress and power. The epitomization of the fair’s profundity and vastness was further ameliorated by precise chronicling of some of the fair’s more...shall we say... _ outlandish _ novelties: the “new snack called Cracker Jack” and the “new breakfast food called Shredded Wheat,” the “whole villages...imported from Egypt, Algeria, Dahomey, and other far-flung locales, along with their inhabitants,” the massive “Street in Cairo” exhibit that “employed nearly two hundred Egyptians and contained twenty-five distinct buildings, including a fifteen-hundred seat theater that introduced America to a new and scandalous form of entertainment.” These descriptions, with their subjects so carefully researched, serve to enhance the reader’s image of the splendor of the Fair, replete with exotic sights, smells, tastes, and sounds. Consequently, the greater level of pictorial intensity makes the reader feel all the more keenly the sense of dissimilitude between the immense, novel preeminence that was the end result, and the vile and visceral of the grounds pre-nascence, when the Old Chicago of vice, the ultimate Black City, sprawled out in all its stinking glory. 

“The women walked to work on streets that angled past bars, gambling houses, and bordellos. Vice thrived, with official indulgence. The parlors and bedrooms in which honest folk lived were...rather dull places…. It was pleasant, in a way, to know that outside their windows, the devil was still capering in a flare of brimstone.” These words chill the blood slightly even as they arouse and inflame it; the seedy, vice-laden, hedonistic, concupiscent portrait painted by this torrid language serves as a discomfiting reminder to the reader that “Old Chicago,” the true Black City only barely kept at bay by the diametric opposition of the vestal White, still existed and  _ thrived _ in a time when most would fain have left it to the dust of archaic depravity in lieu of the stark white marble of moral and cultural redemption. The latter words, especially, delve brazenly into this more salacious inherency of human nature. Honest, plain, prudish folk are naught but “rather dull,” while others take a kind of perverse delight in edifices of vice and capricious knavery, knowing that within them, no man is superior to another; all are united in their shared pursuit of pleasure. Furthermore, a later description practically encapsulates in full this vision Larson paints of human nature, so distorted and unsavory, as he likens the Black City to a “human being with his skin removed.” Not only does this phrase seem a disconcerting harbinger to what the reader suspects will become of Holmes’s victims; it also serves to both demonize and canonize the city as being exactly what he deems it:  _ human _ . Grotesque, macabre, and repulsive, perhaps, but still recognizably, indubitably, uncomfortably  _ human.  _ No one in their right minds enjoys facing head-on such compelling evidence of human hideousness...but then, no matter what blinders are thrown hastily on, no matter what beauty is erected around and over the blight to shroud it from view...no one can deny that it  _ exists _ . And this,  _ this _ is precisely what Larson wishes the reader to see:  _ that it exists. _ Beauty and creative light can overshadow ugly, sordid evil all they like, but they can never make it disappear. White might paint over black, but it will only ever be chipped away, revealing the caliginous stain of societal rot beneath. 

 

These examples, of course, are not the only ones; Larson peppers his prose with a great many more that all work towards impressing upon the reader the sheer magnitude of the juxtapositions running through the work like fluid, inexorable streams. All of the techniques he so masterfully utilizes-- the vivid imagery, the constantly drawn parallels, the lyrical narratives, the volume of fact condensed into the much less cumbersome poetry of the raconteur that he is-- serve to carry this disparity through the book and elucidate to the reader his larger goal of defining in Burnham and Holmes, in the Fair and the Murder Mansion, in the White City and the Black, the same sort of dichotomy inherent in human nature as a whole. In this regard, Larson’s work proves to be ineffably effective, as the engaging, dynamic quality of the story draws the reader in and keeps him there, enraptured, intrigued, and discomfited, until the very end. The reader can see bits of himself clearly in both Burnham (the charismatic dynamo, the visionary of stone and metal) and Holmes (the perverse, the perverted, the sadistic, the feckless, the charming, the vile), and when these qualities are translated to the cities as a whole, their greater import can be clearly seen as it pertains to the diverse spectrum of the human condition.  

 


End file.
